Vapid Lives of Destruction, Part 2: Billionaires are Bad for Us

In this second part of the mini-series on the super rich, let’s look at a few of them. As I promised before, the actual evil deeds committed by some of them are discussed in other articles while this series focuses on exposing their lifestyle and the destructive mindset that comes with that. This second part of the mini-series focuses on how the super-rich arrive in their elevated position and how they live their lives.

First the arrival:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Billionaires: The Youngest In The World (2016) | Forbes”)

Most billionaires are indeed born billionaires, born to be incredibly rich through no accomplishment of their own, born to privilege, and born to be bad. The tiny fraction of them that wasn’t born as billionaires, and who therefore are constantly being dangled in front of us as a justification of our huge wealth inequality (by making huge wealth look as if it were self-made), simply won the lottery of the our capitalist market system — typically with a piece of crap in the software industry, like this Snapchat dude in the video. 

Believe me, those of my readers who grew up with smartphones and think that smartphones are the world: they are not. They are a distraction. They are what we got instead of the life of leisure and lived dreams that my generation was promised as the result of technological progress. Back then, they told us that robots would soon do our chores, and we would be free to decide what to do with out lives, how to spend our years on Earth, which dreams of ours to realize…

Look what happened instead: we are working more hours than before (in my parent’s generation typically only one parent worked a paid job, the other taking care of the home and kids), and we get less for it than before, with many of us now being stuck forever in debt and sliding towards abysmal old-age poverty. In contrast, my parent’s generation could go on regular vacations, often buy or build a house of their own and pay it off before retirement, and their retirement was spent in dignity with guaranteed healthcare and a big retirement income.

The promise made to my generation in books, magazines, and on television from every direction was that things would get so much better than they were for our parents when robots would take over our chores. Instead, the only thing the crooked system gave us was overpriced mini-computers disguised as phones, lacking a keyboard and mouse that would make us productive, sporting a tiny screen too small to see anything (thereby probably ruining our eyes, explaining the current epidemic of bad eyesight), destroying self-explanatory graphical interfaces, and locking us into a disempowering consumer mode where we endlessly consume instead of DOING anything… a consumption spree that often drives us even deeper into debt and distracts us from our growing misery with squalid entertainment and establishment propaganda so we won’t rebel.

If you ask me, those few self-made billionaires who got so rich by bamboozling us with these digital toys don’t deserve their billions any more than all those billionaires who merely inherited their billions and spend their entire lives from the cradle to the grave lording it over us through their wealthy estates. It’s a sick system that takes from the have-nots to pile more and more obscene wealth upon the already obscenely rich, and which creates a messed-up world where – instead of a wonderful, good-for-everyone Star-Trek society – we get a pricey little piece of electronics to distract us from a dark reality, having us eek out our existence in a world more like the one which the movie “The Matrix” described.

More viewing from the outside:

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Inside The Lives Of The Rich Kids Of Dubai”)

Note 1: Believe me, maker of this video, we robbed people would also appreciate good food! Yes, we would!

Note 2: I have had personal experience with the pressure placed on rich kids by their families and peers (yes, I’ve gotten around a lot in my life!). It’s how the billionaire class keeps itself in power (besides bribing politicians, that is). They are all kept at the heel of maintaining this injustice machine of a system that makes their class so unbelievably rich through the process of robbing and enslaving the rest of us.

If you can handle more of this shameless showing off, here are nearly 18 more minutes of it (*shudder*):

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “THE LUXURY DUBAI LIFESTYLE – BILLIONAIRE BOYS”)

Note 3: If I were given such a car, I’d sell it immediately to buy me and my family our own sweet home somewhere nice, with a garden, a dog, and possibly a swimming pool (to relax in between work phases and to help with therapeutic exercise in old age). Oh… and space for one or several aquariums!!! Yeah!

Note 4: And where does all that wealth in Dubai come from, by the way? Oil, I think (and financial tax haven speculations). Are the huge profits from selling the oil under people’s feet distributed equally to the people living above those oil fields? No. Of course not! Almost all goes to just a few to create the local billionaire class. It’s symbolic for how billionaires are created everywhere on Earth: by assigning possession of the local resources to a handful of privileged people who can then leverage them to maintain and grow their wealth and power.

Did you know that the super-rich are building themselves their own gated heaven in Dubai?

(Note: if the video linked above gets deleted, you may search the Internet for the title: “Dubai Billionaires and Their Luxury Homes and Toys – Documentary”)

Part three of this mini-series, planned for tomorrow, will look into how this irresponsible and child-like handling of wealth hurts the billionaires themselves and blocks progress for all of humanity at the same time. It will also appeal to them to grow up and act responsibly, just in case that – against all odds – one of them should ever read this.

~

On Monday, Trump announced his plan to sell off our roads, bridges, and other key infrastructure to his buddies on Wall Street (for pennies on the dollar, of course, the way this scam always works – you were warned about this here last year). They will then set up tolls and fees, charging us for a second time (and for all eternity) for infrastructure we already paid for with our taxes or cuts to government spending back when it was built. That’s the long-practiced privatization scam. Nothing new, except that Trump and his cronies are coming for what’s still left and creating a tolls-for-everything infrastructure. This not only makes life more expensive for us; it’s also very bad for the economy! For what it’s worth, here is a petition against this scam by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) to be delivered tomorrow (Thursday).

We need a permanent fix to lower drug costs! The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare sees a possible chance to weigh in on Trump and Congress to pass long overdue legislation that would rein in the high cost of prescription drugs since both Trump and his recently confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar have made statements that drug prices are indeed too high. (our peer countries have laws limiting medication and medical device prices – only we don’t) — Here is their petition.

Trump’s just released budget will turn America into a modern version of Dickensian England (turning us all into Oliver Twists). To fill in part of the hole which the Trump/GOP Tax “Reform” Scam created, the budget proposes massively slashing Medicare and Medicaid, nutrition assistance, housing and legal aid, disability programs, help with child care and foster care, and other programs that more and more families rely on as we are being pushed over the cliff by the relentlessly greedy plutocracy. Let’s resolve to vote for corporate-free Congressional candidates this year (meaning usually that they have neither an R nor a D by their name), and for now call Congress at 866-426-2631 or find your own state’s senators or your own district’s House members’ direct number and website by Zip Code via THIS link.

~

Ending Note: It takes me at least 100 hours a month to research and write for this site and work on my book. If you like what I do, please consider supporting this site with an automatic monthly donation of even as little as $1 or more. If you can’t afford this, then don’t, but please share my posts with as many friends as possible or help in other ways. Thanks. Only together can we change this world. 🙂